


Compatibility

by orphan_account



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6223810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, sure. My name is Alexander Hamilton,” Alexander tells him, “and I heard your name at enlistment, you qualified with scores off the charts; I want to do what you did, I applied alone, I know the handbook by heart–”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compatibility

There are plenty of prospective Rangers lined up in front of Washington, but the one who catches Alexander’s eye seems just as out of place as he himself does. Average height, lean build, dark hair buzzed close to his scalp; he could probably pass for a model, or a celebrity, but he doesn’t have to be either for Alexander to know his name. He’s the only other trainee not accompanied by a partner.

“Excuse me,” Alexander says, extending a hand as he approaches the other man, “are you Aaron Burr, sir?”

Burr eyes the hand warily before he takes it. His grip isn’t weak but it’s not overtly strong, the shake smooth and practiced. “That depends,” he says, “who’s asking?”

“Oh, sure. My name is Alexander Hamilton,” Alexander tells him, “and I heard your name at enlistment, you qualified with scores off the charts; I want to do what you did, I applied alone, I know the handbook by heart–”

Aaron glances over his shoulder, casually tuning out Alexander’s voice as Washington finishes his speech and steps out, leaving the trainees to their own devices. They’ll have half a day to themselves, several hours of downtime and free run of Kodiak (not that there’s much to do in the area) for the duration. “Memorizing the handbook,” Aaron interrupts, “that won’t get you ahead. Look, find a co-pilot and land some experience. Otherwise, you’ll just end up dead.”

“Actually,” Alex says excitedly, “I was wondering if you might be interested, I notice you don’t have a partner, I wanted to see if you’d be mine, at least for training, I think we’d do just fine.”

This guy doesn’t know how to take a hint. Burr sighs, hooks his thumbs into his belt and regards the newcomer. “Look,” he says, “I appreciate the offer. Lone Rangers are matched once the program gets started; if we’re compatible, you can drop me a line. Do you want to get a drink, in the meantime?”

Sheepish, Alexander flashes him a grateful smile. “That would be nice.”

Aaron takes him to the local pub; it’s not that he actually has any intention of continuing a conversation with this other guy, but his enthusiasm (and oversharing) are a bit of a cause for concern. Alexander’s an orphan– a piece of information he shares within ten minutes of meeting Aaron, though Burr’s history hasn’t exactly been kept under wraps, either. He’ll get on well with a crowd Burr knows frequents this particular bar.

The Laurenses and the Burrs– solely by virtue of being wealthy families, Aaron has known John since they were children and attending the same snooze-worthy Republican fundraisers. John to look good for his dad, and Burr on behalf of his parents, accompanied by his uncle. John moved out as soon as he was legally allowed to– Burr left control of the estate to Sally and applied to the PPDC. She may have switched parties at the first opportunity.

“Yo, Burr!” John waves Burr to his booth, tilting a pint of beer on its bottom rim, watching the foam shift over the inch or two of beer still left in the glass. “You know Herc,” he says, “and this is the Marquis de Lafayette. He’s from France.”

“I gathered,” Aaron deadpans, nodding politely toward Lafayette before pulling Hamilton forward by an elbow. “This is Alexander, he’s gonna need all the help he can get. Give him a chance.”

John grins at Hamilton, extending a fist. “Gonna be a Ranger?”

Alexander bumps it with his own. “Yeah! I hope, anyway, I’m qualified, I think.”

“Sit down, Burr, have a drink.”

“I’ve gotta be somewhere else,” Burr declines, “but while I’m gone, you all enjoy yourselves.”

* * *

When Aaron learns that John and Alexander have formed a pair, their scores in all sectors well within range of each other’s, he’s unsurprised. He’s matched to Lafayette, their similar childhoods being a point of commonality, though they both objected on the grounds of having completely opposite personalities.

Their first drift, Burr decides that he’s full of second thoughts and would it really be such a loss if he were to join the repair techs instead? Drift technicians and mechanics are no less important than Rangers, as the PPDC likes to claim.

It’s the intimacy of a Drift that’s abhorrent to Aaron, the thought of someone inside his head, knowing his thoughts, seeing his ambition and pettiness and resentment and thinking less of him for it. Better if no one knows him like that, better if everyone sees the mysterious, cool-headed Aaron he wants them to.  

… still. He’d always wanted to be a Ranger– and maybe it won’t be so bad, he won’t be a disappointment, he won’t repulse his Drift partner–

Lafayette refuses to shave his head; has it braided into elaborately-patterned cornrows instead. Aaron doesn’t see the point, but he doesn’t dispute it– anything to get him into the helmet. Weeks later, after they’ve filled in the waivers and the questionnaires and suited up, they step into the simulator together.

They’re seconds away from activating the Drift when Aaron loses his nerve and hits the abort button (it’s common for Rangers in training to back out at the last minute; he refuses to be embarrassed about it). Lafayette even looks a bit relieved.

“Sorry,” Burr tells him, after they’ve divested their suits. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

“No problem,” says Lafayette, somewhat understandingly, “Adrienne will be here in a week.”

The Marquess and Marquis de Lafayette never actually pilot a Jaeger before returning to France, the two of them financing the Mark III mechs almost entirely on their own savings, with plenty to spare. Aaron had known he was wealthy, but he hadn’t realized that he was rich enough to make the Burrs and Laurenses combined look like peasants.

* * *

He meets Theodosia Bartow seven weeks into a rotation in the infirmary. She’s in for a checkup, her weekly dose of Metharocin. The Schuyler Sisters accompany her, three of them hanging on her every word, Eliza and Angelica flanking her like guardians.

(Their three-pilot Jaeger, Common Sense, first deployed a year ago; four years after Theodosia and her husband’s mech, one of several dozen Horizon Braves. The Bartows are something like Jaeger pilot legends.)

By the time the Schuylers have left Aaron alone with Bartow, he’s captivated. She’s deeply intelligent, wit cutting and hilarious. She seems to see through Aaron, never lets his slip-ups past without a comment but never seems to judge him for them. She says that her husband may not be able to pilot for much longer, might need surgery, has been losing vision in his eye for months now.

Against his own better judgment, Burr tells her that if she still wants to pilot a Jaeger, that he would be happy to step in for Mr. Bartow. She laughs, and kisses him on the cheek, and tells him she’ll consider it.

Mr. Bartow doesn’t even last a year– two months later, after a drop, he passes out and never wakes up. Theodosia takes a two-month leave, and when she returns, she makes it back just in time for another kaiju attack.

The Schuylers and Laurens-Hamilton teams are losing badly by the time Theodosia orders the techs to help her into her suit– then she shocks everyone when she follows up with a request for Aaron Burr as her co-pilot. Their first Drift, being an emergency drop, they don’t have much time to explore the intricacies of their neural handshake, and Aaron has no time for second thoughts.

Thinking back on it, after, he wonders that he’d never been afraid of Theodosia seeing his innermost mind; after all, didn’t she already know?

* * *

Aaron’s five years into his Ranger career, happily married to Theodosia for four and a half of them, a proud father of one beautiful little girl with her dad’s eyes and her mother’s wit, already apparent at two years old.

He’s not the only one; Eliza Hamilton, formerly Schuyler, and Alexander had a shotgun wedding two years after Alex first deployed with John. The men are as close as ever; rumors abound that they and Eliza have some sort of arrangement, and John dotes on little Philip just as much as Alexander does. Theo and Phil play together often, and Burr likes the family well enough.

The year Aaron finally decides that he might be comfortable like this, that he has a routine, and a life, fame and prestige, everything he ever wanted– the category IV Kaiju, codename Patriot, rips John Laurens out of his Conn-Pod and Hamilton brings Indigo Revolution to shore by himself. Three days later, Theodosia collapses; she succumbs to the same radiation as her husband, Metharocin having delayed its onset but not preventing it altogether.

They hold the funerals a day apart, one after another.

“Burr,” Hamilton says after Theodosia’s service, his face haggard, “doing alright?”

“About as well as you are,” Aaron replies, mouth stretched into a plastic smile. “You should get some sleep, it’ll be a long night.”

Alexander pulls a face, clapping him on the shoulder. He tries to imitate Burr’s expression but falls short of it. “That’s not reassuring,” he quips, “everything is horrible, you’ve been hanging in dark corners like a creep, it's a little jarring.”

Aaron lets the grin drop, his eyes slipping to the tiles under his boots. “Good night, Alexander.”

“I’ll see you round, Burr.”

* * *

Aaron considers leaving the Shatterdome several dozen times over the next month, but he’s a certified technician and Drift mechanic and the dome has been short on those, lately. He can’t bring himself to quit and his own memories of close encounters with kaiju keep him from taking a sabbatical. Not that there’s much he can do during a drop outside of a Jaeger, but there’s no safer place than a Shatterdome when a kaiju attacks.

The other factor is Hamilton.

Alexander’s been scouting trainees, working each of them over in the ring to find a suitable match. He fully intends to crawl back into a Conn-Pod once his Jaeger’s been repaired, which to Burr at least sounds like absolute madness. Still, he’d come up with Hamilton, graduated in the same class, with identical scores across the board. The idea that he might drop out of service before Hamilton keeps him firmly rooted to Kodiak, despite how much he thinks about moving back to the East Coast.

Besides, with his and Hamilton’s mechs out of commission for want of a pilot, that leaves only the Schuyler sisters to hold down the coast. They’re excellent pilots, but drops have been steadily increasing in difficulty for several years now.

Hamilton never does find a trainee who matches his standard, and Burr catches the other man staring at him far more often than he’s entirely comfortable with (mostly because he knows exactly what Alexander is thinking, though luckily the man has enough tact to let him grieve).

It’ll be another two weeks before a kaiju surfaces again, a monstrous spiked thing that Lafayette cheekily codenames ‘King’. The Schuyler sisters deploy but in LOCCENT, standing in opposite corners of the room, Burr’s eyes involuntarily jump to Hamilton, who takes just that moment to look back at him. One Jaeger isn’t enough. Never has been, and it won’t be. They’ve lost Laurens, and Theodosia, and the thought of losing Angelica’s dry, biting wit; Eliza’s gentleness; Peggy’s indomitable cheer– Burr feels his mouth go dry. Hamilton turns back to the screen, his expression haunted.

“Marshal,” Burr says when Common Sense hits the water, refusing to wither under the look Washington pins on him. “Hamilton and I– we’ll back them up.”

Washington doesn’t like him– never has, and especially not compared to his golden boy. When he gives the affirmative, a long pause then a firm “Suit up,” Aaron is almost entirely sure that the pride welling up in his chest isn’t his own.

“We need a callsign,” Alexander says as he gets dressed, scrambling into his drivesuit with a haphazard speed that just barely matches Burr’s routine efficiency. “Something we can respond to that we’ll both be used to, but it won’t distract us.”

“If you say ‘hamburger’,” Aaron snarls, “I’ll turn around right now, that’s not a name I’m willing to discuss.”

Alexander groans, stepping into the harness as Angelica and Peggy laugh over their comms, Eliza having muted her own for the sake of her husband’s pride. “Alright, fine. We can name it after you. Killjoy Sourpuss.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Burr says, trying to pull back on the smugness as their Drift initiates but knowing that Hamilton hears his thoughts anyway. It’s only a temporary codename, until they can sit down and hash one out together, but what do they have in common?

“Well,” Hamilton huffs, rolling his eyes as if acquiescing to the superiority of Aaron’s naming skills, “go ahead, if you’re so insistent.”

“This is Orphan Legacy,” Burr announces, “and we’re ready to go. Copy, LOCCENT.”


End file.
